Top 10 worst things about the web

Theft and fraud are major downsides of the web

For every way that the web has improved our lives (see the Top 10 best things about the web), it has also made things more complicated, frustrating and dangerous.

One can't uninvent technological breakthroughs, nor should one. Fire has been tremendously useful to humanity over the millennia, but tell that to the the victims of an arsonist. Cars have freed us from the tyranny of distance (and saved certain regions from terminal inbreeding) but still kill hundreds of thousands each year.

So having gone over the best that the web has brought, let's now take a look at some of the worst things from the web.

10. Over commercialisation
Shaun Nichols: At times, navigating the web can be a lot like walking through a giant bazaar of overenthusiastic street vendors and desperate used car salesmen.

While life in big cities such as London and San Francisco isn't exactly short of ad placements, it pales in comparison to the barrage of banner ads and pop-ups that accompany some sites.

Imagine walking down the street, and every time you pass a store front, someone jumps out and waves a flyer in your face or waves around an airline ticket or just leaps in your face and screams "You may have colon cancer and not even know it!"

In the book Spook Country, William Gibson wrote about a character who was so tired of advertisements that the mere sight of a company logo or trademark made her physically ill. I know the feeling; some times my trusty AdBlock tool is about the only thing keeping my lunch down.

Part of this is just economics: when you're giving content away for free, you have to make revenues other ways, usually through ads. While I have no problem with site hosts and content providers trying to make a living off their work, the whole process becomes very, very tiring sometimes.

Iain Thomson: Marc Andreessen once told me that Tim Berners-Lee called him up when he was developing the browser and gave him an earful for including the ability to include pictures on the internet. After my daily bombardment of adverts I can begin to see his point.

Few things on the web are as annoying as adverts, and we've all got our pet hates. Personally it's the adverts that play video at deafening volume as soon as they load, which in the past has led to a mouthful of tea going over a keyboard in surprise.

While there are now thankfully plug-ins to extract most advertisements from browsers, the ad boys and girls are constantly on the look-out for new ways to bypass them. Their argument is that they are just obeying clients' orders and opening up opportunities that readers may not have known about. Personally I call this the Yuppie Nuremberg defence: "I vas only paying zee mortgage."

Shaun quotes Gibson, so I shall return the favour and point to Neil Stephenson. A quick trawl through Snow Crash and The Diamond Age will show you very plausible examples of where this is going. As technology improves and we carry more and more technology that can identify us, advertising is going to become more intrusive, and increasingly sophisticated and personalised.

He also raises a very good point, however. Advertising pays the bills for most online content and, as people are still unwilling to pay for it themselves, the adverts are keeping the whole web running semi-profitably. It would be a poorer, smaller web if it wasn't for the adverts. I just wish advertising executives would learn the value of the rapier over the cudgel.

9. Overexposure
Shaun Nichols: Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube. We have become a society that is rapidly losing any sort of comprehension of the term 'too much information'.

The obsession with social networking and sharing has created a class of people whose sole desire is to become broadcast all over the web, a group some online gossip sites have termed 'fameballs'. When Jim Carey made The Truman Show 10 years ago, the idea of broadcasting a person's entire life was scary and surreal; these days it has its own term: 'lifecasting'.

It's ironic that people get so paranoid about the government tracking people through RFID and CCTV devices. Heck, half the population is already pretty much begging others to track them online.

Iain Thomson: In some ways the services Shaun mentions are an irritant, but they can serve a useful purpose. Last Christmas I was due to attend a party and found it had been cancelled. My partner Tweeted the news and we all got together anyway in another venue.

But this is a rare case. It's a sad but inescapable fact that most people's lives are just too dull to be worth all of the broadcasting going on. Do I care that a friend of a friend has just had a great cup of tea? Not in a million years, and I wish he'd just shut up about it.

But I think we're going to be facing something of a backlash against this sort of thing. Social networking sites in particular seem to come in and out of fashion on a two- or three-year cycle. MySpace is losing ground now but who remembers its predecessor Friendster? Facebook is proving more popular, but I think these things have their half life.